Entries tagged with resources

I don't know if any of you may have seen this today on Tumblr, but author Diane Duane is a Sherlock fan and apparently a pretty avid reader of fanfic. She made a post called Johnlock fanfic: On Balloon Words, Idiom!cest, and the Building of Better Smut. Although she's writing specifically about Sherlock fic, I think a lot of what she has to say could apply to any fanfic, or really, any writing.

Heh, here she tackles one of my fanfic pet peeves:

When you’re in one character’s point of view in the middle of a descriptive scene, you can make a pretty strong case that the descriptors used for other characters the POV character is interacting with should be the POV character’s descriptors, not those you might associate with omniscient-narrator mode or some similar “uninflected” third-person writing voice.

This being the case: it would make me intensely happy (should anyone be interested in doing that) if people would please lose the continual use of epithets when writing from one primary character’s POV, especially in intimate circumstances. “The doctor.” “The Army doctor.” “The consulting detective.” And the ones that particularly get up my nose: “The taller man” / “the shorter man” / “the older man” / “the younger man” / etc. etc. ad nauseam.

It's been a while since I added anything into our resources post (linked off the comm's sticky post). Getting a link suggestion today made me think there were surely other things that ought to be on there!

If you've got a useful writing website or other resource that's not already on the post, please comment (on the resources post itself is probably best) & let me know so I can add it in. Thanks!

I started off using Google Docs for my fic for portability reasons, but I decided I didn't want to have quite everything in my online life linked to Google, just in case of hacking, etc. So I've been using Zoho Writer for months. It's very similar to Google Docs but a bit more basic. I've also found that it's occasionally buggy--formatting does odd things, or you have to paste something in twice before it actually pastes, etc.

However, twice now it's randomly erased the entire text of a document instead of the one word I'd intended. Fixable, because with the document versions (what they have instead of track changes) I was able to revert to the previous version. But still, disturbing!

I also wish you could mass export files--I think you have to do them individually, as far as I can tell.

Keeping all that in mind, does anyone have any recommendations for other web-based word processors I could try? Or does everyone use stuff like Dropbox? If you love the system you have set up, I am open to persuasion! Alternatively, of course, if there's something you'd suggest I avoid, please share.

Want to write with a group this weekend? Want to feel that you're not the only one staring at a computer screen, toiling away? Want to have someone to complain to, or whine to, or celebrate with? Then come join us at the LJ community fic_rush!

There's a fic_rush round (writing session) once a month, and this month's round is THIS WEEKEND, from midnight GMT tonight through midnight GMT Sunday. At the top of every hour, there will be a new post at fic_rush's writing round comm, fic_rush_48. People then reply to the hourly post and to each other and talk about how the writing is going, or say anything else that's on their minds (especially if it happens to involve penguins).

It's a very informal, casual and fun place. Start whenever you like -- just introduce yourself and say what you're working on -- then stay for as long as you want. Members come from all over the world, so no matter what time you drop in, someone else is likely to be around. Most people drop in and out all weekend. All fandoms are welcome, as is original writing.

We already have several members of writethisfanfic at fic_rush, and we'd love to have more!. In fact, we'd love to have everyone! Hope to see some of you there!

(For more information, see the fic_rush FAQ. If you want to know what it's like during a round, check out the past posts at fic_rush_48. Please also feel free to ask me questions.)

parlour_treats is a new, no commitment, no claiming, no activity checks community for letting your muses have their say. Prompts will be going up bi-monthly, but you can bring your own too! Also, all media types are welcome, for responses. So if your muse keeps bugging you to make a fanmix, this might be the place to share it.

Lifehacker has an article on a cunning way to stay motivated through long projects that sounds useful for all us crazy longficcers.

Basically: when you start to get bored or demotivated, take a break and do something smaller. It seems ot me that fanfic is pretty much made for this approach, since it comes in 'short' and 'long' forms by default.

What's helped you writing fic? Is it something that has helped you get past writer's block, made you less afraid to post something, helped you find out useful information? Maybe an application or website that makes actually sitting down and churning out words easier?

It would be great if this could evolve into a comprehensive resource geared towards fic writers, especially new(ish) ones. Please keep letting me know what essential tools you've discovered, and I'll add them to the list. (I'm also happy to further annotate links if there's other information of note.)

General Discussion About Writing

Writing in quantity. Some good information here on tools, motivation, and other ways to just get that word count going.

750 Words. Based on Julia Cameron's idea of "morning pages," where you write without censoring yourself for 3 pages a day--though not necessarily in the morning! You can get e-mailed reminders to write; there are badges and points for motivation. There's also 750words.

inkingitout, our affiliate comm, is a year-long high word-count challenge.

Write or Die. Set a time limit for writing, and if you're not writing the whole time, the website gives you consequences ranging from a gentle reminder to erasing your text!

Written? Kitten!. The carrot to Write or Die's stick: if you write, you get shown cute pictures of kittens!